Is Your Cell Phone Making You A Jerk? --TIME

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TIME magazine arrived regularly in my mailbox for years. I had to stop getting it.
The tipping point was the images on the covers. They were images one should not see without some kind of preparation. For example, I'm sure that young Afghani woman was relieved to have a new nose, after she was shown on TIME's cover without one...but the context in which that image appeared (supporting the Afghan war) made me unspeakably sad, and hit me like a ton of bricks.

But there are often excellent pieces in TIME that you don't find elsewhere and here is one.

Is Your Cell Phone Making You A Jerk?



Cell phones keep us socially connected, but new research suggests they actually reduce users’ social consciousness. In fact, the study showed that cell phone use was linked to more selfish behavior.

Researchers from the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business found that after a short period of cell phone use, people were less likely to partake in “prosocial” behavior — actions that are intended to help another person or society — compared with a control group. For example, after using a cell phone, study participants were more likely to turn down volunteer opportunities and were less persistent in completing word problems, even though they knew their answers would provide money for charity.



Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2012/02/20/is-your-cell-phone-making-you-a-jerk/#ixzz2DlbztbrF



I liked this comment from the San Francisco Chronicle reader responding to their coverage of the study:


Personally, I pay for my cell phone and I will answer or not answer calls and texts as it suits me. I will not be a slave to the phone and I definitely will not pay for the privilege of being a slave to a device. I have told people, including family members, if you want to be sure I always pick up when you call, you'll have to pay my phone bill. I have told friends they can come over to visit or they can call/text others - what they can't do is come to visit me and then spend all their time on the phone to others.

Don't waste my time! I freely acknowledge the selfishness of my position and don't give a damn!


Amy Graff wrote for the Chronicle:

This is a small study that hasn’t even been peer-reviewed but I think it begins to get at a major problem with cell phones: People become self-absorbed when they use them. I’d love to see a study looking at how people act selfishly while on their phones—stealing parking spaces, cutting in line at Starbucks, running other drivers out of their lanes—in everyday life. I’ve too often seen people fail to pick up their dogs’ droppings and parents neglect their kids because they’re gabbing on their phones. (I know that I’ve been guilty of it with my own children.) Cell phones are addictive and when you hear the bell call, it’s hard to ignore—even if you’re at the park playing with your kids.

The other weekend my husband and I found ourselves in an unusual situation without the kids for a couple hours. We both needed to work but squeezed in a walk to spend some quality alone time together.

About five minutes into our stroll, his iPhone beeped. He pulled out his phone and responded to the text…and then he sent another text and another and another. Fifteen minutes later he was still fully absorbed in his phone—and acting as if I didn’t even exist.

I was annoyed and told him. He made me feel like a nag for complaining. The texts were related to work, he told me.

“Can’t you give me 30 minutes of your time on a Saturday afternoon?” I said.

And then his phone beeped again…



The above might be the reason I've become even more reclusive than I ever used to be. I can't stand my time being wasted by people who are right there in my space who can't be in the present. Going out to dinner and having to compete with a device for attention is not my idea of a fun time, and, so, I go out to dinner less and less these days with friends. I just thank heaven my baby isn't addicted to his phone.

Oh yeah, they put tumors in your head, too.


Another person's comment was music to my Luddite ears:

Society was better when everything was human and manual: no software, no electronics, no electrical motor, no gasoline motor, no steam engine. Wind mills probably okay. Everything that needed to be done was done by a human.

Also, no guns and ammunition: if you wanted to fight and kill (in war or crime), you must be close enough to be personal.


There are so many other comments that say what I've been thinking for years and I can't help reprinting them here.

They are comforting to read because as I look around every day, I get to feeling really lonely and uncertain about the future. IE: If these next generations are supposedly going to run things one day, what kind of decisions will they make?



Cell phones and especially "smart phones" do whatever the opposite is to meditating and living in the moment, they subtract you from your surroundings isolate you from yourself, the world and the others. To he'll with apps and games and fb, use it when really needed only.

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1 reply
furtherstill 7:38 PM on February 19, 2012
As someone who used to meditate on koans while waiting for public transit, I must say, indeed. When cellphones started to massively proliferate 15 or so years ago, I realized that introspection was dying amongst its last unwilling holdouts. It's now dead and buried for those that most needed it.

Now I find myself living in a world populated by witless adherents to a combination of both the Orwellian and Huxleyian nightmares.

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Continuously amused by "studies" that imply that one technology or another breeds a certain, usually antisocial, behavior. Video games do not cause violence, pornography does not cause sexual deviancy and cell phones do not cause people to be selfish. What these technologies MAY do is bring to the surface preexisting behavior, but that concept doesn't sell many papers...


My response to that: No, that concept might not sell papers, but ad revenue from cell phone companies keeps papers in business, so said papers are continuously full of endorsements for cell phones.



Continuous yakking and gibbering of the braying donkey is at an all time high. Having a life, social interaction and common sense is...uncommon.
I use my phone least as it is best. It is for outgoing calls and I seldom answer incoming calls. It runs me about $20 monthly and that folks IS priceless.



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"Self Phones"


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Thanks for mentioning parents on cell phones ignoring their children. I have seen mothers in grocery stores so often, on the phone, while their children trail vacant-eyed behind them. I just hope we aren't raising a generation of emotionally damaged, or even psychopathic, children (I keep thinking of that experiment with the wire, and the towel-and-wire, ersatz monkey mothers...)

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This reminds me of the wireless ad with the kinda weird-looking young woman with the bangs that is on her phone every minutes of the day, while walking the dog, ordering food, riding the bus, ...

Get off the phone, idiot. It is not normal to be staring at an electronic device all day, ESPECIALLY when there are other human beings present.


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Turn off your cell phone, get off facebook, and live damn it!


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The government wants a nation of cell phone zombies. If it threatened to remove their teleco crack pushers, the vast majority of the braindead would agree to do anything to resume their addiction.

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I am afraid the consensus is in, Homeland Insecurity will have roaming officers to SMASH peoples cell phones at random who are crossing the street yakking on it. We all wish it hadn't come to this, but it has. Let's call this Operation: Scared Straight. Yes, I like that. Now Officers, get-a-smashing. ((Yes, same old same old: I am liberal and a strong civil libertarian.))


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Hold on just a sec, I gotta take this call and then I'll write my comments.......


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You really need a study to show this?


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I suspect smartphone-addicted people are less selfish, and instead just suffering from severe attention deficit disorder, which comes off as self-obsession in the company of others. It's what happens when one is glued to the Facebook app. I rarely give these folks the time of day, because it's way way more difficult to engage them. Sorry smartphone geeks.


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How would you feel if asked to turn your device off (or leave it in a basket at the front door) when visiting a friend or family member? Would that offend you? Make you feel "disconnected" or "cut off"? What is the purpose of immediate "connectivity" if you can't connect with those immediately in your presence?


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It is not ok and is rude to answer a phone while someone is having a conversation with you. How would you feel if someone opened a newspaper and started to read it while he/she was talking with you. If it's an emergency situation, run out the door and answer the phone, but if not; leaving a friend to wait for you to end your "more important" conversation is not right. When ever that happens to me, I walk away from the person. Sometimes they get angry, but that is THEIR problem. They caused it.


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People on cell phones in public are neither here nor there.


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They're self obsessed with some other self-obsessed person on the other end...they can have each other. The older you get the more you appreciate solitude, autonomy and not being bothered every five minutes. First thing I did when I got my cell phone was disconnect texting. You want to email me I will reply on my own terms and time. The immediacy of texts is what makes cell phones so insidious. People become foaming Pavlovian dogs when the cell phone chimes...


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For people who are so attached to their cell phones, that's it's almost like they've grown another appendage, there is no longer any purposeful connectivity between them and their surrounding environment. Non-stop chatting and texting on these devices indicates one of three things: 1.) The users have (or on their way to developing) an obsessive-compulsive disorder; 2.) They are extremely self-absorbed; or 3.) They're using the cell phones as an avoidance mechanism. To those who might fit into any of these categories, here's some advice: watch out where you're going, don't get behind the wheel when you're chatting or texting, and remember to make time for your loved ones...


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don't forget the idiots who text while driving, talk about selfish...


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Remember: when you're on a cell phone, it really is All About You. Including buses who will always courteously stop while you're obliviously jaywalking.


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I would never sell fish, even if I had a cell phone. Let them catch their own!


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Remember when after seeing a movie you would linger in the lobby and talk about it with your friends and maybe a few strangers.

Now it's a bunch of narcissistic nitwits on their phones tweeting or updating their facebook status to a bunch of people they barely know, while ignoring the people they're with.


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Yes! and I remember when movies had intermissions (either it was a long picture or a double-feature) and talking with strangers who were really into the show. Last time I did that was in the '80's at the Surf Theatre - evening during a Kurosawa film fest...have people forgotten how to interact face-to-face?


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Some thoughts. Some commenters whose replies I didn't print here are angry at the article. They say you only notice selfish people because of their phones and their loud conversation. I differ. I think phones have made rudeness the new "normal" and that we now have to deal with distracted people in ways that are actually life-threatening (they get behind the wheel). It's a cultural thing, a monkey-see-monkey-do kind of thing.

And there are these comments by people who think the study wasn't done properly. They may be correct about this. However, the study confirms my overall impressions of a change in the way people communicate, the way they respect or disrespect others in their space, and the way they avoid or engage with human contact. I did study communications in school, and it's remained an interest bordering on obsession---communication. It is a thread that connects us all, a survival tool; and it changes depending on the technology. Communicating via smoke signal is going to be different than communicating by cell phone, and you don't need a study to see the differences. The comments confirm that it's not just me--many people feel alienated and insulted by the neverending parade of distracted people. I also don't like talking to people on cell phones because they are open radios. Anyone can listen; and the sound is awful and drops out, cuts off. You might be in the middle of a really important conversation, on a topic which speaks to your deepest heart. The heartlessness of being cut off is always present. And there's deniability, too; anyone using a cell phone can fake being "cut off", so it diminishes honesty, as well.

Here are the comments from the people who say the study wasn't done properly.



Were those same students asked when they hadn't just used their phones?

If not, there's a confound: the same students who yak on the phone a lot and are more likely to have been yakking on it recently, are also the selfish ones.

Sounds like another "study" without a decent control.

Responses:

And the conclusion that it's the cellphones that *cause* selfishness is unwarranted (at least based on this article). Correlation does not equal causation...


and:


Daisy0072 has hit it exactly on the head. This isn't cause and effect, it's effect and cause.

It's not that the cell phone causes the selfishness (as much as the blog author wants to believe this about her husband), it's that the selfishness causes the self-absorbed constant cell phone use.

To be at all meaningful, this would have to deal with separate groups that use cell phones equally, and somehow just time the requests either quickly after a call or longer after a call. There is no indication this was done.

(Indeed, it may be impossible. The truly selfish probably never have a long interval off the cellphone.)

There is definitely a correlation here--but blaming the cellphone for the boorish behavior is like saying that people who wear XXXXL clothes are fat, therefore wearing XXXXL clothes causes obesity.





Just one more observation and I'm out. There is an absolutely astonishing number of deleted comments on this story. The Chronicle says they are comments by "a user who has been blocked by our staff." I don't think I've ever seen so many deleted comments on a story.

Since newspapers *do* rely on that telecom ad revenue I can't help but feel suspicious about the number of deleted comments.